Image Description from historic lecture booklet: "This is an amazingly beautiful lake; more than a thousand feet above sea level, about fifty miles long and exceedingly deep. Azure blue, cobalt blue and the blue of coral seas are seen in its waters; and on the highest summits of the practically treeless ranges that wall it in. snow exists at all times of the year. Geologists say that Waktipu occupies the bed of a glacier, but according to Maori mythology it was dug with a spade by Chief Rakahaitu. Gooding says "If this be true, Rakaihaitu was the greatest navvy New Zealand has ever produced and had he lived today he would have been the very man to dig the Panama Canal."
